Fuchsia

Scientific name: Fuchsia hybridaLight: Give high light when displayed inside the home. On the patio, select partial shade.Water: Keep the soil moist. Water when the surface just begins to dry. Plants benefit from increased humidity.Fertilizer: Feed every two weeks. Use a houseplant product at half the normal strength.Propagation: Quick to root from tip cuttings.Special features: A most beautiful and desired pot or hanging basket plant for home display. Regretfully, few gardeners are successful at growing the fuchsia through the summer.

Q: I bought six fuchsias last spring that flowered and looked good until summer. They are slowly declining. What can I do to keep them healthy? A: Fuchsias prefer the cooler weather, growing best October through May in Florida landscapes. The hot rainy summers encourage root and stem rot problems that usually cause the plants to decline. No matter what you do some leaves and stems are going to be lost. Gardeners who do get the plants to survive keep them in filtered sun out of the daily rains.

Scientific name: Fuchsia triphylla. Growth habit: An upright to rounded evergreen perennial growing to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The leaves are dark-green to reddish-green with burgundy veins, ovate in shape and growing to 4 inches long and half as wide. Light: Plantings appear to prefer light shade but can tolerate all but midday full sun. Water needs: Prefers a moist soil; water in-ground plantings weekly and container plantings when the surface soil begins to feel dry. Feedings: Apply a general fertilizer once every six to eight weeks to in-ground plantings; feed container plantings every other week with a 20-20-20 or similar fertilizer solution.

Scientific name: Fuchsia triphylla. Growth habit: An upright to rounded evergreen perennial growing to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The leaves are dark-green to reddish-green with burgundy veins, ovate in shape and growing to 4 inches long and half as wide. Light: Plantings appear to prefer light shade but can tolerate all but midday full sun. Water needs: Prefers a moist soil; water in-ground plantings weekly and container plantings when the surface soil begins to feel dry. Feedings: Apply a general fertilizer once every six to eight weeks to in-ground plantings; feed container plantings every other week with a 20-20-20 or similar fertilizer solution.

QUESTION: During a recent trip through the Northern states we bought a fuchsia. The plant was in full bloom but is now looking droopy. What care does it need?ANSWER: A little cooler weather should help perk up the fuchsia. The plant seems to melt during the hot summer and early fall days. Late October through most of spring is the best time to grow the fuchsia in Florida.Give your plant filtered sunlight and water when the surface soil just starts to feel dry to the touch. Also feed the fuchsia with a house plant product every three to four weeks to encourage new growth and blossoms.

By Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, December 25, 2005

This holiday season, forget the old standby red, white or pink poinsettias. The hot new look is colors such as teal, turquoise, apricot and lilac sprinkled with glitter. Mother Nature has nothing to do with the new color palette. The credit goes to a new floral dye that is sprayed on white poinsettias, says Paul Gehrke, head grower at Hines Nurseries in southwest Miami-Dade County. Hines is South Florida's largest poinsettia nursery. Saima Husain, product manager who created the new poinsettias for Hines, said the idea originated in Europe.

QUESTION: I love the look of a jumpsuit, but I've been told by someone whose fashion advice I respect that I am too tiny to wear jumpsuits. (I'm 5 foot, 3 inches and weigh 108 pounds.) Is this correct? It doesn't make sense to me.ANSWER: Me neither. Solid colors and fitted garments always have been the rule for petite women (those 5-foot-4 and under).Here's what fashion writer Susan Ludwig says in her book Petite Style (New American Library, $10.95): ''For the petite woman, the key to looking great is a single word: longitude.

Prince Charles, on his purchase Friday of a stylish, hand-knit wool sweater in fuchsia, purple and lime at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago: ''This is just the kind of thing Di would like to have.''

Horrors! Princess Diana admitted Tuesday she was economizing when royal fans noticed she was wearing the same outfit to a city she visited just five months ago. The 32-year-old estranged wife of Prince Charles recycled a fuchsia pink dress when she visited the central England city of Birmingham.

The more civilized the society, the more names it has for colors. So report the scholars. The most elementary group, they say, speaks only of black and white. Next step up adds red. More advanced knows green and yellow, then blue and brown. Eventually, orange, pink, purple, the whole rainbow. Don't know about magenta, fuchsia and chartreuse. Too civilized, maybe.The Chinese invented the wheelbarrow in the first century B.C. and immediately made it a military secret.

By Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, December 25, 2005

This holiday season, forget the old standby red, white or pink poinsettias. The hot new look is colors such as teal, turquoise, apricot and lilac sprinkled with glitter. Mother Nature has nothing to do with the new color palette. The credit goes to a new floral dye that is sprayed on white poinsettias, says Paul Gehrke, head grower at Hines Nurseries in southwest Miami-Dade County. Hines is South Florida's largest poinsettia nursery. Saima Husain, product manager who created the new poinsettias for Hines, said the idea originated in Europe.

Scientific name: Fuchsia x hybrida. Growth habit: An evergreen upright to cascading perennial usually treated as an annual in Florida; grows to 16 inches tall. The leaves are lancelike, dark green and often have a reddish tinge; they grow up to 2 inches long and an inch wide. Light: Plant in filtered-sun to shady locations. Water needs: Prefers a moist soil. Water when the surface soil begins to dry. Feedings: Feed container-grown plants every other week with a 20-20-20 or similar fertilizer solution, in-ground plantings monthly with a general garden fertilizer.

QUESTION: Several of our banana plants are flowering. After producing a few hands of fruits, the plants are dropping the remaining flowers. How can I get them to set more fruits?ANSWER: Florida bananas tend to be reluctant producers. Home growers often report that plants set five to seven hands of fruits, and then, as you noted, continue opening nonproductive blossoms. In part, this is a cultural problem in which the plants do not receive adequate care to be productive in sandy soils.Get maximum production from your bananas by establishing the plantings in soil enriched with organic matter.

I'm a big fan of microfiber. Unlike some other fake silks, microfiber looks, feels and drapes like the real thing and is machine-washable. Microfiber carries brilliant color just like silk. Compare the vivid fuchsia silk Dana Buchman designer version with the Dress for Less version. Both look wonderful.This ensemble from designer Cathy O is being offered at a discounted price for Dress for Less readers.Large-size women often shy away from bright colors, and this is a mistake, especially when a flattering design like this one is available in a variety of beautiful colors from purple to teal.

QUESTION: During a recent trip through the Northern states we bought a fuchsia. The plant was in full bloom but is now looking droopy. What care does it need?ANSWER: A little cooler weather should help perk up the fuchsia. The plant seems to melt during the hot summer and early fall days. Late October through most of spring is the best time to grow the fuchsia in Florida.Give your plant filtered sunlight and water when the surface soil just starts to feel dry to the touch. Also feed the fuchsia with a house plant product every three to four weeks to encourage new growth and blossoms.

Horrors! Princess Diana admitted Tuesday she was economizing when royal fans noticed she was wearing the same outfit to a city she visited just five months ago. The 32-year-old estranged wife of Prince Charles recycled a fuchsia pink dress when she visited the central England city of Birmingham.

QUESTION: I love the look of a jumpsuit, but I've been told by someone whose fashion advice I respect that I am too tiny to wear jumpsuits. (I'm 5 foot, 3 inches and weigh 108 pounds.) Is this correct? It doesn't make sense to me.ANSWER: Me neither. Solid colors and fitted garments always have been the rule for petite women (those 5-foot-4 and under).Here's what fashion writer Susan Ludwig says in her book Petite Style (New American Library, $10.95): ''For the petite woman, the key to looking great is a single word: longitude.

What a drag it is to get yourself all gussied up to go see a fancy polo match and then find yourself sitting under a tent which barely blocks the stifling heat, battling streaky mascara and runny lipstick . . .Some women and men were bemoaning the weather, while others pronounced it ''beautiful.''And of course it was beautiful - for a July afternoon, not a November morning.Such was the case Sunday at the Seventh Annual Southern Ballet Theatre Polo Classic.About 500 people ponied up $50 each to partake in a brunch and watch four chukkers of a polo match at the Ben White Raceway on Lee Road.